Sun forest
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Sonnenwalde is the traditional name of a former late medieval forest workers' settlement on the edge of the Schwarzatal in the Saalfeld-Rudolstadt district in Thuringia .
location
The remains of the settlement, including the former Vorwerk Sonnewalde and the pheasantry that existed there from 1714, are located 500 m northeast of the Schwarzburg stop of the Schwarzatalbahn in the Schwarzburg I state forest .
history
At the instigation of the noble family of the Schwarzburg - Käfernburger , one of the oldest in the Thuringian area, most of the villages in today's Saalfeld-Rudolstadt district emerged during the main Rode period (around 11th to 14th centuries). These lay on areas suitable for arable farming. With the steady increase in the population in the late phase of the clearing period, the mountain and forest settlements in particular emerged on poor soils, they could not exist in the long term. Soon the majority of them were woodcutters, charcoal burners and Harzers, pitch and soot burners, as well as carters, miners and smelters.
Fourteen of the places mentioned in a Schwarzburg official description from 1370, including Sonnenwalde, fell in the 15th century. According to local tradition, they are said to have been destroyed or abandoned during the Blackburg House War (1448–1450). The Sonnenwalde Vorwerk, newly built in 1481, is mentioned in the Sitzendorfer church chronicle. The plague epidemics of 1579 and 1611 also claimed numerous victims in the Schwarzburg office, and between 1620 and 1623 the remaining residents of the area were plagued by roaming rabble. In the course of the Thirty Years' War, the Schwarzburg office was repeatedly affected by epidemics and war events, the population fell rapidly afterwards.
A change occurred with the elevation of the Counts of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt to the imperial prince status in 1710 under Ludwig Friedrich I. Now the until then neglected Schwarzburg Castle experienced an enormous upgrade as the ancestral seat of the Princely House, and the transformation into a representative manorial one began Adjoining seat. Hunting was an essential part of the baroque court. The sovereigns used the nearby Schwarzburg often and gladly, it had been converted into a baroque hunting and living palace in several construction phases. Parts of the wooded area had been enclosed with game fences since 1453 in order to concentrate the game in suitable places. Gamekeepers were entrusted with the construction and maintenance of game barriers , the game population was dependent on intensive additional feeding. On the so-called deer meadow below the Schwarzburg, up to 500 red deer from the surrounding forests were herded together for princely hunting events. The pheasantry was built in 1714 next to the Sonnenwalde farm. The area of several hectares was secured with a high wall, and several buildings were built. In the GDR era, the expropriated princely property around the Schwarzburg was redesigned for tourist purposes, and the pheasantry became an equestrian center for the surrounding holiday and health resorts with up to 20,000 visitors a year.
literature
- Rüdiger Spengler: Tourist Wanderatlas Schwarzatal, 1st to 3rd edition 1979, 4th edition 1985, 5th edition 1988
Individual evidence
- ↑ Sitzendorfer Chronik, online version (part 1) Retrieved on October 9, 2015
Coordinates: 50 ° 38 ′ 51.4 ″ N , 11 ° 10 ′ 28.9 ″ E